Creche course

India Inc., govt must support working women

Women and Child Care Development Minister Maneka Gandhi's proposal to mandate that private and public sector companies in India provide day-care facilities for the children of women employees would mark an enlightened step towards fostering genuine gender diversity in the Indian workplace. This is an important goal for India not just as a means of establishing the country's progressive social credentials but as a vital support for economic growth.

It is well established that economic growth and human development are inextricably linked to gender equality. Nor is this a concept demonstrated only in the distant developed West. Not far from India's borders, the rapid growth of the Asian Tigers, China and South Korea was predicated on female workforce participation rates well beyond the 60 per cent mark. Even Bangladesh today boasts a figure of 58 per cent, thanks to its booming garments industry, and it is no coincidence that it has displayed markedly improved development and economic indicators in recent years. The statistic for India at 27 per cent compares with several countries in North Africa, West Asia and Pakistan, none of which can be considered beacons of economic prosperity or gender rights.
 

The proposal for mandatory creche facilities in the workplace needs to be seen in conjunction with the plans of Ms Gandhi's ministry to extend maternity leave from the current three months to eight months to align with the government's norms for breast-feeding infants. Both focus on issues that have been mostly ignored by Indian corporations; of fostering a workplace conducive to the unique needs of working women. The high dropout rate of women from the workforce on account of childcare responsibilities is starkly manifest in the 27 per cent gap between men and women's pay in India, according to a recent survey by Monster, the online recruitment consultancy (to be fair, India is not an outlier in this respect).

The major chambers of commerce and industry are circulating both proposals among their members to understand their readiness and the challenges in implementing them. Given the extra cost and effort demanded of the human resources team to accommodate women's requirements, neither proposal may find traction in male-dominated India Inc. This is clear from the poor representation of women in the upper echelons of management and the tokenism with which companies handle two existing requirements that impact gender issues in the workplace. One is the legal mandate for large companies to appoint at least one woman board member, which is observed largely in the breach or by dint of appointing family members. The other is the requirement for sexual harassment complaints committees, which are often conspicuously absent.

These antediluvian attitudes stand in embarrassing contrast to the example set by foreign multinationals. It is striking, for instance, that the large foreign information technology companies in India are all led by women in contrast to their Indian counterparts. All go the distance in attempting to make the workplace easier for their women employees. In most, maternity leave goes well beyond the mandated three months, special transport and advisory and support services are provided for expectant mothers and flexi-hours offered when they return. These corporations work on the practical notion that skill and ability, which provide organisations their cutting edge, are gender-neutral attributes. Today, more and more qualified women are emerging from India's B-schools, engineering and technical institutes and universities - and are as capable of participating in the wealth-creation process as men. In the absence of the kind of situation that prevails in evolved societies like Sweden, where men shoulder an almost equal burden of parenting, working women require organisational support to become meaningful contributors. Corporations that ignore this reality today are denying themselves access to a huge untapped pool of talent and, ultimately, eroding their competitive advantage.